Carey McWilliams (journalist)
Carey McWilliams | |
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Investigative journalist , author, editor | |
Alma mater | University of Southern California, School of Law |
Carey McWilliams (December 13, 1905 – June 27, 1980) was an American author, editor, and lawyer. He is best known for his writings about California politics and culture, including the condition of migrant
Early years
McWilliams was born December 13, 1905, in
McWilliams attended the University of Southern California from which he obtained a law degree in 1927.[3]
From 1927 to 1938, McWilliams practiced law in Los Angeles[3] at Black, Hammock & Black. Some of his cases, including his defense of striking Mexican citrus workers, prefigured his later writing.
During the 1920s and early 1930s, McWilliams joined a loose network of mostly Southern California writers that included
During the 1940s, McWilliams lived in
Political activity and publications
The Depression and the rise of European fascism in the 1930s radicalized McWilliams. He began working with left-wing political and legal organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild. He also wrote for Pacific Weekly, Controversy, The Nation, and other progressive magazines. He continued to represent workers in and around Los Angeles, helped organize unions and guilds, and served as a trial examiner for the new National Labor Relations Board.
McWilliams's activism took many forms. In the early 1940s, he helped overturn the convictions of mostly Latino youths following the so-called Sleepy Lagoon murder trial. He also helped cool the city's temperature during the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, when scuffles between servicemen and Latino youths spun out of control.
Once out of government, McWilliams became an outspoken critic of the removal and
His first bestseller, Factories in the Field, appeared in 1939 and ranks among his most enduring works. Published within months of
McWilliams left his government post in 1942, when incoming Governor
After leaving the state government, McWilliams continued to write prolifically. He turned his attention to issues of racial and ethnic equality, writing a series of important books (including Brothers Under the Skin, Prejudice, North from Mexico, and A Mask for Privilege) that dealt with the treatment of immigrant and minority groups. He also produced two regional portraits, Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946, American Folkways series) and California: The Great Exception (1949), which many aficionados still regard as the finest interpretive histories of those areas. Decades after its publication, Southern California Country inspired Robert Towne's Oscar-winning original screenplay for Chinatown (1974).[7]
In 1951, McWilliams moved to New York City to work at The Nation under editor
Accusations of communist sympathies
Witch Hunt (1950) was an early attempt to combat
Several years later, a group of Los Angeles screenwriters, directors, and producers known as the
McWilliams and Bay of Pigs story
McWilliams was the first American reporter to reveal that the
The story was largely ignored by major newspapers like
Death and legacy
McWilliams died in New York City on June 27, 1980, at 74.[14] Since his death, his critical fortunes have risen steadily. The American Political Science Association gives an annual Carey McWilliams Award "to honor a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics." In Embattled Dreams (2002), California historian Kevin Starr calls McWilliams "the single finest nonfiction on California–ever," and biographer Peter Richardson maintains that McWilliams might be the most versatile American public intellectual of the twentieth century.[15]
His first son,
McWilliams's papers are housed in the
Works
- Ambrose Bierce: A Biography (New York: A. & C. Boni, 1929). Revised edition: Archon Books, 1967.
- America Is In the Heart, A Personal History, by Carlos Bulosan: Introduction by Carey McWilliams (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973; reissue 2014 with addition of New Introduction by Marilyn C. Alquizola and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi)
- Brothers Under the Skin: African-Americans and Other Minorities. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1943).
- California: The Great Exception (New York: Current Books, 1949).
- (Edited by McWilliams) The California Revolution, (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1968).
- The Education of Carey McWilliams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).
- Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939).
- Ill Fares the Land: Migrants and Migratory Labor in the United States (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942).
- Louis Adamic and Shadow-America (Los Angeles: A. Whipple, 1935).
- A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948).
- The Mexicans in America: A Students’ Guide to Localized History (New York: Teachers College Press, 1968).
- North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the US (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1949).
- Politics of Personality: California, The Nation, October 27, 1962.
- Prejudice: Japanese-Americans, Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944).
- Race Discrimination – and the Law (New York: National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, 1945).
- Small Farm and Big Farm (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1945).
- Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (American Folkways series, New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946). Also published as Southern California: An Island on the Land (Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, 1973).
- What About Our Japanese-Americans? (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1944).
- Witch Hunt: The Revival of Heresy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950).
References
- ^ a b "McWilliams (Carey) Papers". Online Archive of California. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-87905-007-8.
- ^ a b Francis X. Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 1. Boston: Western Islands Publishers, 1969; pp. 452–454.
- ^ "Central L.A."
- ^ Richardson, Peter. "Carey McWilliams: Local Hero, American Prophet". Echo Park Historical Society. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
- ^ Richardson, Peter. "Carey McWilliams". Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 28, 2014.
- ISBN 978-0472115242.
- ^ Lykes, M. Brinton et al (eds). 1996. Myths about The Powerless: Contesting Social Inequalities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, page 354.
- ^ Carey McWilliams, The Education of Carey McWilliams 228 (Simon & Schuster 1978).
- ^ Are We Training Cuban Guerrillas?, 191 The Nation 378 (November 19, 1960).
- ^ Montague Kern et al., The Kennedy Crises: The Press, The Presidency and Foreign Policy 105-06 (Univ. of N.C. Press 1983).
- ^ Id.
- ^ Carey McWilliams, The Education of Carey McWilliams 229 (Simon & Schuster 1978).
- ^ Online Archive of California
- ISBN 978-0472115242.
Further reading
- Corman, Catherine A. "Teaching – and Learning from – Carey McWilliams," California History December 22, 2001.
- Critser, Greg. "The Political Rebellion of Carey McWilliams," UCLA Historical Journal 4 (1983: 34–65.
- Critser, Greg. "The Making of a Cultural Rebel: Carey McWilliams, 1924–1930," Pacific Historical Review 55 (1986): 226–55.
- Davis, Mike. "Optimism of the Will", The Nation, September 19, 2005.
- Geary, Daniel. "Carey McWilliams and Antifascism, 1934–1943," Journal of American History Vol. 90, No. 3, December 2003, 912–934.
- Peter Richardson. American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2005; rpt. University of California Press, 2019).
- Richardson, Peter. "Carey McWilliams: The California Years", UCLA Library, May 2005.
- Stewart, Dean & Jeannine Gendar (eds.). Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader (Santa Clara, California: Santa Clara University Press, 2001).
External links
- Carey McWilliams Quotes
- Co-written Letters to the Editor of the New York Review of Books entitled The "Excelsior" Affair, Ford's Better Idea, Violence in Oakland, and Protest
- Interview of Carey McWilliams, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
- List of winners of the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams award
- NewsScan "Honorary Subscriber" Page on McWilliams
- Guide to the Carey McWilliams Papers at The Bancroft Library
- 1965 talk at UCLA on the anticipated impact of computers YouTube, Retrieved 30 August 2015